In This Moment
by pensversusswords
Summary: Elsa and Anna play hockey together. Elsa's been pining for her best friend for a very long time. Pure fluff.


**A/N:** Artwork done by sun-howler on tumblr.

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"So are you going to ask her today?"

"Kristoff would you please quiet down?" Elsa hissed, her head swivelling around to glare at her best friend murderously.

"Ask who what?" Anna chimed in from the other side, and Elsa snapped her head back around with a somewhat frantic smile.

"Nothing!" She hoped that her voice wasn't actually as shrill as it sounded in her own ears. "He's just being an idiot as usual."

Kristoff scoffed. "Yeah, I'm really not the idiot here. You better do it soon or you're going to miss your chance." He was too loud and he was grinning like an idiot and Elsa wanted to hiss at him.

Elsa fought the urge to do something immature like stick her tongue out at him or whack him on the back of his head with her bulky gloves, but considering she was sitting next to Anna and she definitely didn't want her to see that. She just settled for an icy, unblinking glare. He smirked, gave a cheerful wave, then he sprinting up the stairs to go back to his seat.

"What was that all about?" Anna asked when he was gone, one eyebrow arched in curiosity.

Elsa flinched at her voice, and waved a dismissive hand, and shrugged her shoulders. "Nothing, nothing." She gave her a weak smile, which Anna surely didn't buy because she was opening her mouth to say something else when she was interrupted.

"Anna, you're in," Coach Oaken called out from the other side of the bench. "Make it count, less than five minutes on the clock and its 2-2 right now."

"Got it, coach," Anna replied, and tossed Elsa a little grin and a wink over her shoulder before hopping onto the ice. Elsa refused to acknowledge the fact that just from that split second of Anna giving her that easygoing, teasing expression, her pulse was racing and she was pretty sure that her cheeks were flushed pink.

She really had a problem.

"Go get 'em," she called out after her feebly, and winced because that was incredibly lame and sounded like she was from a 90s sports flick, but thankfully she was already gone, lost in the throngs of hockey sticks thwacking together and skates slicing through the ice.

The fact that she got flustered from that, answered Kristoff's question pretty easily; there was absolutely her infatuation addled brain was going to manage asking out her best friend on a date.

It had gotten to the point where she honestly couldn't remember how it felt to not be in love with Anna, or at least, how it felt to not know that she was in love with her. The sight of an awkward, fumbling red head with those bright, upturned eyes that kind of reminded her of the way the sky looked after the clouds cleared following a rainstorm, was enough to make a shy, fourteen year old Elsa to become completely infatuated when she asked if the seat next to her was taken.

The answer, of course, was an embarrassing sputtering that luckily Anna understood to mean _no, you can sit here._

See, the thing with Elsa was that she wasn't very good at the whole making friends thing. She was muted, the kind of girl that exuded grace and poise and people were intimidated by her inherent elegance, even at the age of fourteen. Other girls were gawky and not used to the sudden influx of growth, but Elsa had taken it all in stride, her polished demeanor not fouled by the wrath of puberty. Of course she wasn't always comfortable in her own skin, but she always seemed to be, and that wasn't always the best way to make friends.

She had Kristoff, her best friend since he had dumped a bucket of sand on her head on the first day of preschool, and she had returned the favour by filling a glass full of ice water and pouring down his back. They'd been inseparable ever since, from sharing legos to text books, and he wasn't going anywhere. Besides him though, she never really had anyone else, because no one else seemed interested in approaching her, and she didn't have the guts to approach anyone else.

Then, there was Anna, who was the exact opposite of Elsa; bright, cheerful and so _open _, the kind of person that Elsa didn't think would ever have any interest in talking to her. So when she slid into the seat next to her with a grateful smile that Elsa thought was absolutely beautiful because of the way it lifted the corners of her lips softly and met her eyes with what could only be described as sparkling, that once she realized why she only had one friend, she would take off in the other direction.

To her surprise, that didn't happen.

Instead, Anna chatted to her amiably, accepting her quiet and subdued responses without question, and filled in the gaps where most people would expect Elsa to contribute. She effortlessly spurred Elsa into a conversation she had actually found she wanted to participate in.

Then, when class ended and Anna turned to her with a hopeful grin as she hunched one shoulder up and tucked a few stray strands of hair back behind her ear, a gesture that Elsa had grown to love and appreciate more and more as the years went by, Elsa all but melted into a puddle when she asked a question in a soft voice.

"Would you mind if I sat beside you again tomorrow?" Her voice was tentative, almost hopeful in a way, and for the first time since she'd walked in the classroom, she'd actually looked a little bit shy.

Elsa just nodded, too eagerly and with comically wide eyes, but she didn't care, because she wanted this girl to sit next to her every single day for the rest of eternity, and no, that definitely was not an exaggeration.

Yeah, she'd been pretty much hooked on Anna ever since.

"Elsa I want you in as well," Coach Oaken bellowed, breaking her love struck trance as he waved one of the players off the ice.

Elsa nodded, silently pulled her helmet on, grabbed her stick in her gloved hand and slid onto the ice, the blades of her skates slicing through the scuffed surface of the rink. She skidded to a stop in her spot, defensively placed in front of the goalie, shoulders squared and feet planted firmly. A whistle screeched, loud and shrill, and then she forced everything out of her mind, leaving no room for anything else but the whisper of her stick against the ice, and the clacking sound that went along with the black blur of the puck dancing around the rink.

And well, if she spared a moment here and there to watch Anna whizzing across the ice, who could blame her? She was lucky enough to be within a hundred yards of her and still be able to function.

Since she was hanging back as a defender, it wasn't until the clock had nearly run out that the puck came near her, too close to their net, and she was darting forward before she even had time to think about it. She managed to scoop it out of reach of one of the other team's players, flicking it away from the advancing enemies. One of her teammates curved their stick around it and took it away to the other side of the rink, and Elsa's spurt of adrenaline faded, just as the player from the other team who had been trying to get to the puck before Elsa hip checked her into the boards.

She felt her body tremble with the force of their body slamming into her, jarring her teeth together painfully, and her back smacked roughly against the boards with the familiar clattering of a mass of flesh and padding crashing into the side of the rink. She slipped to the ground with a muffled moan as the wind was knocked out of her when she lost her balance, and the other player smirked at her, before skating away without a backward glance.

Elsa groaned again and grabbed her stick, eyes seeking out the ref as she hauled herself to her feet.

"Foul," she croaked out, gesturing after the player wildly with one hand, but the ref just shrugged and continued on past her, chasing the movements of the puck.

"Jerk," Elsa grumbled under her breath, glaring at his receding back.

Then, all was forgotten because when she was standing up straight again and looked across the rink , she saw fiery hair peeking out from under the helmet of her teammate who had the puck, streaking towards the net, dodging obstructions like they meant nothing to her. She felt something fierce building in her core as she watched, unfurling and heating inside of her.

Which is why when Anna scored the winning goal just moments before the clock ran out, Elsa found herself tearing her helmet off, tossing her stick aside and cheering loudly in what was very distinctly a non-Elsa fashion.

"Anna, you did it! You were amazing," she yelled, grinning so wide that her cheeks were starting to protest and she was pretty sure that her teammates were staring at her, but she hardly noticed because Anna had torn off her helmet and was skating towards her with an expression of giddy excitement and that pretty much made her so happy it ached.

"You saw me?" Anna demanded as she skidded to a stop in front of Elsa.

"Of course I saw you," Elsa exclaimed, and wow, she really needed to tone down the grinning, she could practically feel the over the top excitement wafting off of her in waves. "You were amazing Anna, you won us the game. I'm so proud."

Then there was a blur of red hair and freckles and warmth, and Anna's arms were looped tightly around her neck, soft mouth pressing to her own cool lips.

Instinctively, Elsa's arms wrapped around her, mainly out of concern that she would fall over in her haste to throw herself at Elsa, but then she froze in complete shock. Her eyes were glued open, her vision was swimming with the image of Anna's face being _right there, _so close that she could see the faintest crease in her forehead and a flyaway hair that had escaped her trademark braids and was brushing against her cheek.

She was _kissing_ her.

Her lips were hesitant and gentle, undemanding as they pressed against Elsa's, her body sagging into her touch. Warmth flooded through Elsa, tangling with confusion and a faint glimmer of arousal, as her mind fought to process the fact that the girl that had had her pining for years was currently kissing her like she was the most precious thing in the world.

She was still ice solid when the sound of their teammates hooting and catcalling at them pierced through the fog of contentment that had settled over Elsa's mind, and Anna stopped the kiss by startling backwards with a sudden jerk.

The look of nervous confusion on Anna's face was wrong, out of place and not the expression Elsa wanted to see right now.

"I'm really sorry, Elsa," she stammered, pulling back and out of her arms. Elsa immediately felt the loss of warmth like a missing limb and wanted to grab her back and clutch her against her body. "That was probably weird and I crossed some line, gosh I can't believe I did that, we can just forget about it…"

As she spoke, Elsa felt her heart sinking, and there was a resounding chant of _no, no, no, no, no,_ running through her mind. Anna had just kissed her and she was backing away, presumably regretting what she'd done in the spur of the moment, afraid of how Elsa was going to react. Elsa could see the panic in her eyes, it was the same look she'd had on her face when she'd been at Elsa's house and she tripped and knocked over an expensive vase. Elsa had spent hours trying to convince her that its destruction wasn't the end of the world, just to get that stupid look of blind panic off of her face. She probably had no idea that it was something Elsa had been dreaming about for ages, that she had wanted to kiss her more than she wanted anything else in the world.

Something snapped inside of Elsa then, and she was moving forward until she was nose to nose with Anna. That aching feeling of loss began to subside when she placed one hand on her waist to hold her close against her, and her other hand cupped Anna's freckled cheek gently. She stopped her apologetic rambling, her mouth snapping shut with an audible click, and she stared back at Elsa anxiously.

"Elsa, what are you-"

She leaned in, and captured the question on her lips, chased any doubts away as she poured all of her longing and desire into one kiss. Anna made a tiny noise of surprise at the back of her throat, but she didn't resist, so Elsa didn't back away.

It wasn't an overly passionate kiss, Elsa didn't take more than Anna wanted to give, just held her gently and cradled her cheek as she pressed against her. Her lips moved languidly and firmly, as she felt herself taking Anna apart at the seams with every caress and whisper of her fingers against her flesh. Anna responded beautifully, melting in her arms with a contented little sigh, her arms winding back around Elsa's neck as she kissed her back with the same fervent desire, gentle and fierce at the same time.

When they finally parted, their audience of teammates had thankfully stopped with the obnoxious cat calling, and Elsa was pretty sure that they both at equally goofy, lovesick smiles on their faces.

"Go on a date with me?" she breathed, her thumb making a trail across her cheek as she ran it back and forth over her soft skin.

"Duh," Anna answered, and leaned in to kiss her again, lips pressed gently against a smile that Elsa wouldn't have been able to contain even if she had tried.


End file.
